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CAVEN L5B1ARYKNQX C LLEGETORONTO

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LfDH., X COTORONTO


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m A ? / CO-ROMAN PERIOD

BY

ADOLF DEISSMANNDR. THEOL. (MARBUKG), D.D. (ABERDEEN), PROFESSOR OFNEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG

TRANSLATED FROM THE AUTHOR S MS.BY

LIONEL R. M. STRACHAN, M.A.ENGLISH LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY

OF HEIDELBERG

EDINBURGH : T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET1908


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Printed 1907Reprinted 1908


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JAMES HOPE MOULTONGRAMMATICO PATRE DIGNO


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PREFACETHE following pages originated in a course oflectures given at the Hochstift, Frankfort-on-Maine, in January and February, 1905. Theywere first published in English in THE EXPOSITORYTIMES, vol. xviii., October i9o6-April 1907, andhave since been carefully revised.The indices have been made by my friend and

colleague, Mr. Strachan, who is also the translator.With reference to the wish expressed on page

52, I may add that a splendid collection of privateletters of the Ptolemaic period has recently beenpublished by Stanislaus Witkowski : Epistulaprivate gracce. quce. in papyris cetatis Lagidarumservantur, Leipzig (Teubner), 1906.

ADOLF DEISSMANN.HEIDELBERG, 6th May 1907.


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CONTENTSPACK

vii

I. THE PROBLEM NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE . III. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TEXTS FOR THE

PHILOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THENEW TESTAMENT 2"JIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TEXTS FOR THE

LITERARY INTERPRETATION OF THE NEWTESTAMENT 48

IV. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TEXTS FOR THERELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE NEWTESTAMENT 67

V. RECAPITULATION PROBLEMS FOR FUTUREINVESTIGATION .... IOI

INDICES . 121


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NEW LIGHT ON THENEW TESTAMENTFROM RECORDS OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD

I.

THE PROBLEM.THE nature of the problem before us the illustration of the New Testament by recently discoveredtexts of the Graco-Roman world requires perhapsa word of explanation, chiefly because it is notself-evident from the title of our investigation precisely which texts are meant. It will, however, beat once apparent that a study igsources from which we are able to reconstruct the^historical background of the New Testament and.consequently, of

Primitive Christianity.The historical background of Primitive Chris

tianity is the ancient world, the ancient world inthe widest sense of the term, Eastern as well asWestern. Not alone the Eastern, and certainly

I


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2 THE NEW TESTAMENTnot alone the Western world, but the one, great,civilized world around the Mediterranean, whichunder the Roman Empire displays a unifiedstructure, so far as the Hellenizing and Romanizingof the East and the Orientalizing of the West hadworked in the direction of unity.Any one who wishes to reconstruct this great

background to the transformation that took placein the world s religion, will have recourse particularly to the literatures of the imperial age, and tothe literatures of the previous epoch, so far as theywere living forces influencing the spirit of that age.Two groups of literary remains have especially tobe considered : on the one hand, the fragments ofJewish tradition preserved in the Mishna, theTalmuds, and other allied texts ; and, on the otherhand, the Graeco-Roman writers of the Empire.

Great, however, as is the importance of all theseliterary materials, it is not of them that we are tospeak here. A scholar might well make it hislifework to re-edit, with the resources of modernarchaeology, the splendid edition of the New Testament published a century and a half ago byWettstein, with its parallel passages from Jewish,Greek, and Roman literature ; but, all things considered, there are at present so many Christian andJewish theologians engaged in investigating theancient Jewish literature the Christian with less


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THE PROBLEM 3prejudice, and the Jewish with better methods thanformerly and, similarly, there are so many busyworkers employed on the Grceco-Roman literatureof the imperial period, that we are already acquainted with large portions of the literary background of Primitive Christianity. These literaryremains, moreover, are in such high estimationthat numbers of people are more or less unconsciously of opinion that the historical backgroundof Primitive Christianity may be completely restored from the literature of the imperial age.They forget that the literature, even if it were

preserved in its entirety, is only a fragment, thoughan important one, of the ancient world. Theyforget that every reconstruction of the ancientworld attempted by means of the literary textsmerely is bound to be one-sided, and that comparisons drawn between Primitive Christianity andthis fragmentary reconstruction of a fragmentaryworld may easily fail of success. Only a few yearsago a scholar so acute and learned as EduardNorden,1 in an estimate of Primitive Christianityfrom the philological and literary points of view,set up contrasts between

the Apostle Paul andthe ancient world which are in fact nothing but

1 Die antike Kumtprosa vom VI. fahrhtmdert v. Chr. bisin die Zeit der Renaissance, Leipzig, 1898. Cf. a criticismof this book in the Theol. Rundschau, 1902, v. pp. 66 ff.


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4 THE NEW TESTAMENTcontrasts between the non-literary prose and theartistic literary prose contrasts that have nothingto do with the opposition between Primitive Christianity and the ancient world.The following pages are to be regarded as an

attempt towards supplementing the historical background of Primitive Christianity, and at the sametime as a protest against overestimating the worthof the literary evidence. We shall sketch theimportance of the non-literary evidence of theimperial period, i.e. the innumerable texts onstone, metal, wax, papyrus, wood, or clay whichhave been rendered accessible by the archaeological discoveries and researches of recent years,so far as they belong to the period of the rise andfirst development of Christianity, say, from the timeof Augustus to Diocletian or Constantine. Thesetexts have been made accessible to us chiefly inthe last century, the century of archaeology andepigraphy, as it might well be called ; but so farfrom their being exhausted, the recognition oftheir importance for the historical understanding ofPrimitive Christianity is still by no means general.The cuneiform inscriptions have been drawn uponfor years by Old Testament criticism, and by acombination ofgood work and pufferythe problem ofthe cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament

has become so popular, and has been so often


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THE PROBLEM 5handled, that the few scholars who have not yetcommitted themselves on this question ought reallyto form an alliance, in order to escape from anisolation that has become almost unbearable.Huge as the question is, we ought none the less toremember, amid the noise and dust of the greatBabylonian work-ground, that the age which sawthe rise of Christianity has also left written monuments, which as a whole possess an importancefor the understanding of the New Testamentsimilar to that possessed by the cuneiform inscriptions for the study of the Old Testament, save thatthe importance does not lie so much on the surfaceand is not so easily made plain to every distinguished layman.

In studying these monuments we have something more to do than merely to take the evidenceof the witnesses for the Roman period. As amatter of fact the literary remains are supplemented by an entirely new group, of quite newimportance historically. The literary remains areessentially the witness of the upper or culturedclass ; the lower class is seldom heard of, andwhere it chances to appear, as, for instance, inComedy, it is generally seen in the light reflectedon it from above. The old Jewish literature, it istrue, has preserved, along with an excess of thecultured, learned, dogmatic element, much that


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6 THE NEW TESTAMENTbelongs to the people the rabbinical texts are averitable mine for the folklorist but the Graeco-Roman literature of the imperial period can onlybe described as on the whole the reflex of theruling, powerful, educated class; and this upperclass has nearly always been identified with theancient world under the emperors. Comparedwith Primitive Christianity, advancing from theEast with the force of a volcanic eruption, thisupper class presents the same enfeebled, senileappearance as every other upper class, and thesigns of approaching dissolution are clearly visible.This observation, once made, was held to apply tothe whole civilized world at the time of the newreligious movement, and thus the gloomy pictureoriginated which is usually drawn whenever theattempt is made to exhibit the ancient backgroundof Primitive Christianity. But it is here that thegreat mistake has been made, the mistake of afatal generalization. The upper class has beenconfounded with the whole body of society ; Primitive Christianity to vary the mode of expression has been compared with an incommensurable quantity. The social structure of PrimitiveChristianity points emphatically to the lower,occasionally to the middle class. Primitive Christianity stands in but slight relationship to theupper class at the beginning. Jesus of Nazareth


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THE PROBLEM 7was a carpenter, Paul of Tarsus a tentmaker, andthe testimony of St. Paul at the close of the firstchapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, asto the origin of his congregations in the lower classof the great towns, is one of the most importanthistorical witnesses to Primitive Christianity.Primitive Christianity teaches the lesson taught byevery return of spring-time that the sap risesupwards from below. Byitsjrery nature^Primitiye &Christianity_sto_od contrasted with the upper-classnot at first as Christianity, but as a movement oftheprojetarian lower class. The correspondingpagan class is therefore alone commensurable withPrimitive Christianity at the outset. This class,practically lost to the historian hitherto, hasnow, thanks to the discovery of its own writtenmemorials, suddenly come forth from the rubbish-heaps of ancient cities, towns, and villages, and soloud and persistent are its cries to be heard, that itis absolutely necessary to accord it a quiet and fairhearing. This, in our opinion, is the widest, themost important significance of the non-literarytexts of the imperial period that they enable us tocorrect the one-sided view of the ancient world asseen from above, by setting us in the midst of thesocial class in which we must imagine St. Paulworking, from which we must imagine Christianitymaking its first recruits. We must beware of


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8 THE NEW TESTAMENTpressing this statement ; of course, among the inscriptions and papyri of this period there are plentythat did not originate in the lower class, butwere the work of officials, generals, statesmen,magistrates, and wealthy persons. But along withthese documents there are the innumerable testimonies left by the middle and lower classes,generally recognizable at once as such by their contents or by the style of language true memorialsof the popular dialect, memorials of the pettyaffairs of petty individuals.

In several respects these texts yield importantresults for the study of the New Testament. Notonly does the discovery of fragments of ancientChristian papyri enrich our store of MSS. of theNew Testament and other early Christian writings,and the direct value of the new finds in this

respect is considerable, but the non-Christian.non-literary texts pspprinlly p^ggQs^ "^irect Yf0 11pof a threefold order. (i\ They teachrus the pr/>ppr

lii m of the New Testament andPrimitive Christianity ; (2) they givp us hints forthe proper understanding of the, New-Te.sta.mpnt as,literaluxi ; (3) as concerns th/j h gtpry of rfhfiic"-they affl^rdjrnTiiahlp information by making _f)?fl r t"US^the points of contact and difference betweenPrimitive Christianity nnrl thp anripjit wnrlfl.One whole group of texts has been deliberately


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io THE NEW TESTAMENTi. Let us look first at the inscriptions. The

majority of them are inscriptions on stone, butthere are also inscriptions cast in bronze orscratched on lead or gold plates, besides a fewwax-tablets, the wall-scribblings called graffiti, andthe coins and medals. The inscriptions, numbering some hundreds of thousands, are found overthe whole extent of the civilized Graeco-Romanworld, from the Rhine to the Upper Nile, andfrom the Euphrates to Britain. They have longbeen the objects of attention, 1 but the nineteenthcentury was the first really epigraphical period.The study of epigraphy is represented by twonames above all others : August Bockh in connexion with the Corpus Inscriptionum Gnecarum,and Theodor Mommsen with the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Though the first-namedcorpus of Greek inscriptions is now out of date andis being replaced by fresh collections on the sameextensive scale, yet without this first great attemptat systematization the brilliant development of

1 Even in the interests of New Testament philology. Itdeserves to be remembered that even in the eighteenthcentury there was a theologian who turned Greek inscriptionsto account in New Testament work : Joh. Ernst Imm.Walch, Obsewationts in ]\/atthx"ro 7t[ 77 1 ]

* Also in Le Blant, p. 248 ; facsimile, plate xxi. fig. 9.


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PHILOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION 41This Plenis would then perhaps be the father of

the first. Judging from the facsimile, however, weare of opinion that the word does not occur on thesecond tablet. The first tablet is quite sufficient :Chief Shepherd is a genuine popular title, notfound in any learned work of antiquity, but onlyon the simple Egyptian tablet and, in the greatestpopular work of the ancient world, the New Testament. The faith that named its Saviour thechief Shepherd, placed no magnificent diademof gold and precious stones on His head, butwreathed His brow with a simple chaplet of freshgreen.

While many New Testament words are thussecularized by our texts, much light is also shed onthe meanings of words that were already known tobelong to the common Greek language. Here, too,a single example l shall suffice. Jesus says to theapostles in Mt io 8ff> :

Freely ye received, freely give. Get youno gold, nor silver, nor brass in yourpurses (margin : girdles) : no wallet foryour journey . . . (R.V.).

St. Mark 6 s says :And he charged them that they should

take nothing for their journey, save a staff1 Cf. Die Christliche Welt, 1903, p. 242 ff.


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42 THE NEW TESTAMENTonly ; no bread, no wallet, no money(margin: brass) in their purse (margin:girdle) (R.V.).

and St. Luke (c; 3 ; cf. also io4 and 22 35ff-) :Take nothing for your journey, neither

staff, nor wallet, nor bread, nor money . . .(R.V.).

A characteristic saying of our Lord is herehanded down to us with several variations, but theoriginal shines clearly through them all : theapostles are to take with them on their journeyonly what is absolutely necessary, 1 and thatincludes neither money nor bread. According toSt. Matthew they were forbidden not only to takemoney with them, but also to earn money on theroad (by healing and other miracles). It has notoften been asked what is meant by the wallet(A.V. scrip ), because the answer has beenassumed to be self-evident. Most of the commentators suggest a travelling-bag, 2 moreparticularly perhaps a bread-bag. The Greekword Tr-ijpa can mean either, according to thecontext. The travelling-bag certainly suits this

1 The only questionable point about the tradition is whetherthe staff rightly belongs here.

2 No doubt connecting the words wallet for your journeyclosely together.


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PHILOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION 43context well, the bread-bag not so well, becausebread-bag is superfluous after bread, and onedoes not expect tautology in these brief, pithycommands of our Lord. But a special meaningmade known to us by an ancient stone monumentsuits the passage at least as well as the generalmeaning of (travelling-) bag. A Greek inscription of the Roman period, 1 has been discovered atKefr-Hauar in Syria, in which a slave of theSyrian goddess speaks of the begging expeditionshe has undertaken for the Lady. This heathenapostle who speaks of himself as sent by theLady tells with triumph how each of his journeysbrought in seventy bags. Here he uses our wordTr-fjpa. It means, of course, not bags filled withprovisions and taken on the journey, but a beggar scollecting-bag. This special meaning would suitthe New Testament passages admirably, especiallythe context in St. Matthew : You are not to earnmoney, and you are also not to beg. The divinehumility of Jesus would stand out anew with thisinscription as background were we to adopt thispossible interpretation of the word Tn/pa. In thedays of early Christianity the mendicant priest ofthe ancestral goddess wanders through the Syrianland ; from village to village the string of sumpter

1 Published in the Bulletin de Correspondance HelUnique,1897, p. 60.


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44 THE NEW TESTAMENTanimals lengthens, bearing his pious booty to theshrine, and the Lady will not be unmindful of herslave. In the same land, and in the same age,was One who had not where to lay His head, andHe sent out His apostles with the words :

Freely ye received, freely give. Get youno gold, nor silver, nor brass in yourpurses : no wallet for your journey.

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